The Unauthorized and Incomplete Biography of Katarina Bishop
by luxgloriana
Summary: Nadia gives her daughter a name that will never let her forget that she belongs to one of the greatest dynasties of thieves to have ever tormented the earth. She is named after the great-grandmother, grandmother, and grandfather that she will never meet—Katarina Alexei Mirela Bishop. Or, A story of family, friendship, and love, across generations.
1. Chapter One

**AN: This is also published over at AO3.**

 **This will be a two part fic-this very long chapter, followed by a (much shorter) post Grift of the Magi epilogue. This will contain spoilers for all three Heist Society novels, as well as Grift.**

 **This is a fairly long, rambling fic-appologies if you don't like the style, but there are a few reoccuring themes and motifs, and I felt like the style was fitting for the story I wanted to tell.**

 **EDITED 11/26/2016: Added the line breaks between mood shifts because the doc editor deleted the asterisk markers, and fixed a few HTML problems.**

 **Content warning: there is a very brief mention of a nonviable pregnancy, and very vague implications of an abortion or miscarriage.**

* * *

Nadia met Bobby Bishop in Manhattan on a bitter March afternoon. She was 17, he was 19, and he had almost—almost—stolen her watch.

In her defense, Nadia was distracted, absentmindedly wandering the city's streets. She wasn't thinking about where she was going, or her even her next con, but about what to get her sister for her birthday. She'd already gone through the trouble of stealing a bracelet from Tiffany for Irina, but then her beau du jour had bought her nearly the same thing, and Nadia hadn't a clue what to get her now. Later, Nadia would claim that only her family could drive her to distraction that way, that it was Irina's fault that some street thief had nearly bested her. But not even her sister's birthday could distract Nadia, the scion of perhaps the greatest living thief dynasty in the world, enough to let Bobby Bishop steal her beloved watch.

"You're going to need to do better than that." She said, wrapping her hand about the boy's wrist, digging her nails into his skin.

"Oh, you're going to give me pointers?" He asked, raising a single eyebrow, as a sly, and undoubtedly charming, grin spread across the boy—the man's—face. There was only a faint shade of anxiety in his eyes.

Nadia thought quickly, as she had been trained to do. She gave the boy—the man— _the guy?_ —a smug smile, and looked him up and down.

 _He was clearly a good pick-pocket._

 _He had a smile that could charm a statue to life, and even though his clothes were a little ill fitting and worn, his teeth were gleaming white, and his eyes were bright and sharp. He was handsome, and that's always promising, isn't it?_

 _And despite his words, his tone was sincere._ Nadia, a girl used to fooling and manipulating men who didn't know any better, knew that this boy—this man—was not underestimating her.

He at least deserved a cup of coffee for that, right?

"Sit down with me, have a cup of coffee. I'll tell you everything that you're doing wrong."

Nadia wasn't an inside man, except for when she really needed to be—that was usually Irina's job. Charming people didn't come as naturally for her as lying to them did. A large part of Nadia was afraid that this very handsome boy would think she was flirting with him, because she absolutely wasn't. No. He was charming, but no. She was just examining new talent.

Regardless of what he felt about her intentions, the boy nodded.

"Alright." He said, still nodding. The smile remained. "I never pass up an opportunity to learn."

The found a nearby diner and bought two cups of coffee to go. Despite Nadia's initial invitation, they did not sit down and talk. Rather, they walked around Manhattan, up and down the avenues, as Nadia gave him a practical lesson on picking pockets, snatching jewelry, and petty street crimes. After two hours, she asked the man if he wanted to learn more. She told him, frankly, that he had talent. He agreed, and they made plans to meet up the following day at the Central Park Zoo. They did, and then they agreed to meet up again, and then again.

The fifth time they met, they told each other their real names—the ones their friends and family called them, not the ones on their passports and driver's licenses or what names paid their rent.

The sixth time they met, Nadia took him, Bobby, home—not to the apartment on the Upper West Side she shared with Irina, or to the house in New Jersey her dad and Uncle Felix and Uncle Vinnie were currently calling home for the sake of a job—but to Uncle Eddie's brownstone. Uncle Eddie and her grandmother were the only people at home. Uncle Eddie's hands and forearms were covered in flour and bread dough, while her grandmother worked at the kitchen table, touching up the paint on three separate forgeries of the Mona Lisa that her mother had made.

The discussion that followed was awkward and Uncle Eddie nearly shouted at Nadia for the first time in her life, and grandmother did shout, quite a lot, in Russian and Romanian and English. But Nadia dug her feet in, and Bobby pipped in every now and then, and they defended themselves from one side of the great wooden table.

But Bobby immediately became a part of the family, if not _part of the family_. He assisted in a big job in Mexico City and, as Nadia always suspected, proved to be an excellent inside man. He was able to charm anyone, with the exception for Nadia's uncles, although Nadia herself had been charmed by Bobby since the day they met—even if it took her some time to admit it. They spent a lot of time together, walking along the streets of New York, London, Tokyo, wherever, sometimes not even picking pockets as they went.

* * *

Bobby fascinated Nadia. He grew up in Mississippi, she learned, the son of petty criminals and thieves. When he was 12, he turned his own parents in for drug dealing, and at the age of 15, he ran away to Atlanta, then Philadelphia, and then New York. He'd been supporting himself by picking pockets and stealing jewelry, and had slept in a series of vacant pied-à-terres owned by a collection of wealthy investment bankers. He was clever and well read, and had spent a large part of his childhood in the public library in his hometown. He spoke some Spanish and Mandarin and caught on to Russian quickly enough, and was, despite his upbringing, the biggest optimist Nadia had ever met.

They became quite the partners in crime, stealing art and jewelry and money across the world. The rest of the family grew used to the two of them having their own agendas and schemes and plans. No one questioned it when, three years after they met, the two put the call out to the family to tell them that they were planning a Big Store, even though no one had any idea what kind of job they were pulling.

And so, the family descended on Saint Petersburg at 3 o'clock on a cloudless afternoon in late May.

Only Irina and Uncle Felix knew that they weren't planning a Big Store, but a surprise wedding. They married in the Smolny Cathedral, which had been closed to tourists for the day, though no one who worked there could say why.

Uncle Felix, an ordained priest, married the couple, and Irina, recently divorced from her first husband, served as her sister's maid of honor. Bobby looked dashing in his tux, and Nadia looked very much the princess in her long lace veil and the tiara once owned by Catherine the Great, which had been borrowed for the occasion. She was escorted down the aisle by her father, who was red in the face from laughter, a feeling shared by the rest of the family, who couldn't believe that they had actually been surprised by the couple of the hour.

* * *

A month and a half later, Nadia called her sister in tears from the apartment she and Bobby shared in Brooklyn. She was pregnant, something she was certain was a result from all of the champagne that had been included in the honeymoon suite in Paris. She wasn't even 21 yet, and she and Bobby had agreed they wanted to wait to have children, and how was she supposed to be the grease man in the planned heist at the British Museum if she was pregnant?

Irina consoled her sister from the other side of the Atlantic. Irina and Nadia lived lives where things got dangerous if they don't go according to plan. Nadia's pregnancy was worrying—not the worst possible thing, but the timing was bad—and it made Irina think.

Nadia told Bobby the news the next day, when he returned from casing a mansion upstate. He was ecstatic, as Nadia later rationalized, she knew he would be.

Nadia and Bobby went for her first appointment two weeks later. After a few tense minutes, a nurse with a stethoscope turned to Nadia and haltingly explained to her that no, there was no heartbeat. Her body would likely miscarry the baby on its own—but as the kind nurse explain her options, Nadia didn't hear a single word. It was Bobby who explained everything to her later that day, as they sat, clutching each other, on the couch.

Two days later, Nadia was no longer pregnant. Two days after that, there was a knock at her apartment door—it was Uncle Eddie, with a weary look on his face. He sat on the overstuffed couch next to his niece, and delivered even more bad news. Her father, his older brother, had been found dead that morning, in his own bed. Nadia immediately began cursing her father in the language of her grandmother, who had passed years ago. Her father knew he had a bad heart, but refused to go to the doctor, no matter how many times she or Irina asked him too.

* * *

A month after the funeral, Nadia received another knock on her door as she sat at home, reading—Bobby was off in São Paulo, on a job she pushed him to take. It was Irina, bringing coffee and the best pain au chocolat to be found in New York. She took the same seat on the couch their Uncle Eddie had one month earlier, and confessed her recent schemes to her sister.

She wanted a baby, and because she was a greedy thief and a greedy woman, she wanted one of her very own. She had found the perfect donor to be the father—tall and handsome and intelligent—and had conned a doctor into agreeing to do the procedure, no questions asked. She wanted a little girl, she confessed, to raise and to teach to be her own woman, her own thief, with no ties to any man who might distract her from their own dear family. Irina wanted Nadia to support her, and to know that it was okay to move on. Someday, Irina said, their children would be raised as siblings. Their family was the only thing they needed.

Irina announced her pregnancy to the family three months later, during their Christmas Eve dinner. She tells them above their shouts that no, there is no father, at least not one who will have any legal claim to this baby. Irina is having a baby because she wants to, to raise a child on her own, and _because_ , she claims with a roll of her eyes, that she might as well have a baby now, while her body can still bounce back from the pregnancy.

Little Gabrielle Verena Sabina is born in the middle of June, a beautiful, healthy, blonde haired baby born in the middle of a summer storm.

That night, after visiting her sister and new niece at the hospital, Nadia tells Bobby she would like to have a baby. She assures her husband that it's not because she's jealous of Irina, and it's certainly not because Uncle Vinnie suggested that they run a Down Will Come Baby at the Philadelphia mint. Family is the most important thing in life, and she wanted to become a mother.

* * *

Their daughter is born nearly 4 weeks early, at dawn on the first day of spring. Like her cousin, she is born in the middle of a storm, though this one involves ice and snow and has brought New York City to a halt. She's small but she's strong—just like her mother, Bobby announces to the tired collection of thieves and cons who had gathered in the hospital waiting room.

Unlike Irina, who gave her daughter a cosmopolitan name that would allow her to blend in anywhere in the world, Nadia gives her daughter a name that will never let her forget that she belongs to one of the greatest dynasties of thieves to have ever tormented the earth. She is named after the great-grandmother, grandmother, and grandfather that she will never meet— _Katarina Alexei Mirela Bishop_. It's Bobby that makes the first cat burglar joke, as they visit their daughter in the hospital nursery, where she will stay for two weeks. It takes every announce of self-restraint Nadia possesses to stop herself from punching her husband in the arm, and reminding him of the legal differences between theft and burglary for the enth time.

Once she's home from the hospital, gifts arrive for Kat in droves. As Bobby sorts through the presents that piled up in the living room of their small apartment, he grumbles half-heartedly to himself, muttering something about Nadia's family spoiling their daughter. Nadia, as she bounces back and forth with Kat in her arms, laughs, and insists that no, there were just a lot of people who loved their daughter very much.

* * *

For the first three years of Kat's life, Nadia and Bobby stayed in New York, taking only short term jobs while they taught their daughter Russian and French and took her to gymnastics classes for toddlers. Occasionally, Kat accompanied them on jobs—no one ever suspects the parent with a baby of any wrongdoing—and another time, her Uncle Roy takes her to the circus with his two sons, who distract the guards as he smuggles their elephant into a truck.

When Kat's three and three-quarters years old, the Bishop family travels to Paris. Nadia and Bobby had been offered a job to steal a statuette from Louis Napoleon III's apartments in the Louvre. They go, and stay in an apartment in the 8th arrondissement. They stay for a full month, watching as the days shorten and marvel as the city of lights lives up to its name in preparation of the holidays.

They visit the Louvre four times before they return to steal the statue, but they really only need two visits to case the place. Nadia and Bobby are just delighted to see Kat's wonder as she explores the halls full of ancient Greek statues and medieval religious relics. They're proud of her already.

One day, as they're wandering around the city, Kat trips on an uneven sidewalk, breaking the strap on her black Mary Janes. Nadia and Bobby watch in amusement as she insists on walking with the broken shoe, despite the fact it falls off with every step she takes. Once she finally starts to get frustrated, Bobby lifts her onto his shoulders, as Nadia leads them down the street, towards a square with a number of benches sitting in the sun. Bobby takes Kat to get a cup of hot chocolate as Nadia buys her a new pair of shoes—bright red patent leather—at a boutique across the square. Kat wears the shoes the following week, with her favorite navy blue dress. Her parents give her six red balloons to match as they visit the Louvre for the final time.

* * *

After Paris, it's back to Brooklyn, but it's not long before they're traveling to Sydney, Taipei, Moscow, Cairo, London, Warsaw. They're together more often than not—sometimes, Kat will be left with her Uncle Eddie, or with her Aunt Irina and cousin Gabrielle, while her parents leave for some far corner of the world without her.

Less frequently, only one of her parents will leave, which to Kat, feels lonelier than when she knew her parents were together. When her father leaves, Nadia and Kat speak only in Russian and Romanian, and they visit the stores and museums of New York to practice counting entrances and exits and security cameras. When her mother leaves, Bobby takes Kat to baseball games and to the zoo to practice picking pockets and diverting the attention of security guards.

* * *

One time, when Kat's six and five-sixths years old, her mother leaves for Russia. It's just after the new year, and Irina's just finished pulling a con on a oil baron from central Texas. She, Bobby, Kat, and Gabrielle are ice skating in Central Park on a Saturday afternoon when Uncle Eddie shows up. His face is grave, and his voice is especially gruff as he tells his great nieces that he needs to speak to Bobby and Irina alone, so why don't they go sit on that bench for a moment?

Kat and Gabrielle do as Uncle Eddie says, and sit on a bench twenty feet away. The park is busy and noisy, but Gabrielle assures her younger cousin that she can read lips now and tries to explain what the adults are talking about. Kat later finds out that no, her cousin cannot read lips, because her daddy and aunt and great uncle were not talking about a doll hiding in the kitchen sink.

Bobby leaves the park three minutes after Uncle Eddie arrives, saying only a brief goodbye to Kat, brushing off her pleas to explain what's going on. Uncle Eddie disappears too, leaving in the opposite direction as Bobby. Irina then gives Kat a brief hug and tells Kat that she'll be staying with her and Gabrielle for a few days because daddy needs to go be with mommy.

Irina hails a cab back to Brooklyn. As Gabrielle persistently demands to know what happened to Auntie Nadia, Kat does her very best to avoid her aunt and cousin's concerned attention, and to stifle her sniffles and hold her tears at bay. They visit the Bishop's apartment, where Kat insists on packing her own suitcase full of clothes and books and her favorite stuffed animal, a polar bear named Bianca.

They go to Uncle Eddie's brownstone, where they stay alone for ten days. Gabrielle and Kat share the room that their mothers used to share when they were young, a frilly pink room with embroidered pillows. Irina is as comforting and nurturing as anyone could possibly be, ordering all of Kat's favorite foods, and keeping the girls busy with geography and German lessons. Gabrielle stuck by Kat's side at every moment, ready to be the mature older cousin, to comfort or lecture Kat should she start to break down or throw a tantrum. Kat starts to resent her cousin, who refuses to leave her alone for more than ten minutes at a time when all Kat really wants is to sit in a quiet room, alone. /p

After ten days, her father and Uncle Eddie return as the girls are eating dinner in the kitchen. They are followed by 6 of Kat's other uncles, all looking gruff and ruffled. Bobby is at the front of the pack, his eyes are shining and red. As soon as Kat sees him, she slips out of her chair and meets him halfway, crying as she wraps her arms about her father's neck and presses her face into the shoulder of her father's wool coat. Her father carries her into the quiet guest bedroom on the first floor, where he haltingly explains to his beloved daughter—who looks so much like Nadia—that mommy isn't coming home.

Four days later, there's a funeral. It's closed casket, for reasons Kat wouldn't concern herself with for years.

The gleaming black casket is lowered into the frozen ground next to Kat's grandparent's graves, and later, a wake is held at Uncle Eddie's brownstone. The entire family is there, even Uncle Charlie, eating and breaking bread made by Uncle Eddie himself. Even members of the other families are there—Kat meets the youngest DiMarco, who will annoy her with his persistent crush on her for years. They file through a receiving line to speak to Uncle Eddie and Kat and Bobby, to share their condolences and gifts of food and flowers. Kat stands there, occasionally nodding and smiling and thanking these strange and familiar people, but spends most of her time feeling lost in the crowd of older and taller people who stand and speak with her uncle and father, trapped between them and the wall.

After the line dies down, Kat sees an opportunity to escape, so she goes and stands on the stoop in the bitter cold air, watching as the street lights flicker on and the sun drops below the skyline. Gabrielle steps out of the house behind her almost half an hour later, telling Kat that it was time to come inside. Kat shakes her head, refusing to let Gabrielle see that she had been crying. Gabrielle puts her hand on Kat's shoulder, and tries to steer Kat around to bring her inside. Kat, entirely frustrated with the attention her cousin had been showing her for two weeks, snapped, and shoved Gabrielle away by her own shoulder, nearly pushing her off of the stoop. After catching her balance, Gabrielle huffs and stomps away, telling Kat she was an ungrateful little rat and that Gabrielle wouldn't even care if she froze to death.

* * *

By the end of the next week, Kat and her dad are in Hong Kong. There are no jobs lined up, and they didn't know anyone there, and they didn't know how long they will be staying. They tried to stay busy regardless, to keep their mind off of the fact that they each woke up every morning expecting to find Nadia Bishop sitting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper.

Two days before Kat's 7th birthday, Uncle Eddie shows up with a suitcase full of birthday presents from the family. As Kat sorts through the books and dresses and black turtlenecks, Uncle Eddie speaks quietly to Bobby. They're having a serious conversation, and Kat tries her best to look very interested in the book on Ancient Egypt she received from Uncle Felix so she could eavesdrop without suspicion. All she can hear is that Uncle Eddie wants to take her on a job, that Kat needs to learn, and that it will be good for her for things to start to go back to normal. Her father is reluctant, but relents.

Uncle Eddie takes her to Austria, where they steal half of the Habsburg Crown Jewels to hold for ransom. Uncle Eddie lets her try on everything they stole, and before they're returned, he pops a light blue sapphire out of a large collar style necklace and replaces it with a fake he pulled out of his pocket. He shows Kat the sapphire, and reminds her that it's not safe to keep momentos from jobs, but this is a special exception. The next day, they visit an old friend of Uncle Eddie's, a jeweler who sets the sapphire into a ring that Kat picked, that she takes back to Hong Kong on a thin chain worn around her neck. It won't fit her until she's older, but she likes that she'll have a reminder of Uncle Eddie someday.

* * *

Kat lives with her father in Hong Kong for a total of eight months before they leave. For the next two years, they are constantly working jobs together, and for the most part, it's wonderful. Kat has practically been bred to be a thief, and she makes a wonderful assistant for her father. Sure, there are a few times where something reminds Bobby that Kat is still a little girl—like the time her dress got stuck in the security gate at Buckingham Palace, or the ferry ride between Athens and Rhodes where he learns that, despite being a perfectly capable swimmer, Kat is terrified of the ocean.

It's not until Kat's 10 years old that Bobby takes a job where Kat can't go with him.

She stays overnight with her Aunt Irina and Gabrielle for the first time in years, at Irina's husband's house in Marseilles. The three of them spend their afternoons on the beach, and travel to Provence one afternoon, just to look at the lavender fields—or so they claimed. Kat and Gabrielle bicker when they're alone, and on her last night of her stay, Irina visits Kat before bed and explains to her things that her mother would have told her, things that Kat doesn't want to admit her father had tried and failed to explain to her. They made a part of her resent, not for the first time, that she was a girl.

* * *

When she's eleven and a half, Kat gets her first period in the middle of one of Aunt Irina's wedding receptions—which, thanks to Uncle Felix's mechanizations, is not a legally binding wedding, but they still have to call Irina _Princess Mariah_ now. The whole family's there, most in disguise, even Kat, who feels awkward in the dress that she's certain is both too sophisticated and too childish for her tastes. Her stomach starts to hurt in the middle of dinner, and she excuses herself to the bathroom. She panics in a way she had never panicked before in her life—she was taught to always keep her head. But she's not sure what she can do in that moment that won't draw too much attention to herself, when her aunt's in the middle of a con that's mixed their whole family up with royalty once again.

It's Gabrielle who comes to Kat's rescue—she noticed Kat was missing, and knocked on each stall door in the bathroom until she found her cousin. Gabrielle is as helpful as Kat could wish for her to be, but it's years before either of them acknowledges the kindness that Gabrielle showed to Kat that evening.

* * *

Kat reaches another milestone when she turns 12—she's allowed to pull jobs entirely on her own. She no longer needs to tell her father where she plans on going to pick pockets, and one day, when she eavesdrops on a London city boy bragging about a Picasso he owned, her father let her break in and steal it all on her own. That Christmas, Uncle Eddie tells her of a family tradition—she and Gabrielle were now old enough that they had to steal a gift for every member of the family for Christmas. The two of them made it a competition, seeing who could take steal the most gifts from New York's department stores and who can steal the most expensive gift of all. Gabrielle wins the first, and Kat the second.

Kat reveals herself to be as talented of a grease man as her mother, and as creative and as conniving as her father. She is the pride and joy of the family, and is called to all parts of the globe, seemingly endlessly performing heists and cons. Every job the family plans has a space for her on the team, and as she grows older and more capable of playing new roles and learning new skills, she plays bigger and bigger parts. Her father and uncle take her to an open parking lot in Jersey and teach her how to drive a few days after she turns 13, before strictly informing her they they won't actually give her a forged license for at least a year. They insist they're just teaching her in case of an emergency.

But by the end of that spring, Kat had completely lost track of the number of jobs she'd pulled since New Year's Eve (she distinctly remembered the one she pulled on New Year's Eve, however, because of the fireworks). She was exhausted. She was determined to do as many jobs as she possibly could, and to learn everything she could, but Uncle Eddie stepped in. Kat needed a break, and they'd all done well enough before they could ask Kat to fly across oceans and hemispheres to join them on jobs. They could change their plans to pull jobs without her—give the poor girl a break.

Kat went a whole month before she started to feel too antsy, too jumpy in her own skin. She needed to do something, to steal something, in order to keep her skills sharp. So she sneaks out of the brownstone one night near the end of June, steals her Uncle Calvin's Vespa, and drives upstate to Wyndham Woods to steal a Monet from a mansion full of riches.

She leaves the Monet—it's only a decent forgery—and escapes the house with W.W. Hale the Fifth instead. He rides behind her on the Vespa, wearing the spare helmet with his Superman pajama pants and wrinkled white t-shirt. After an hour of a rather surreal journey, Kat stops at a gas station, and insists that the two of them go to a 24-hour store together so the boy can wear something other than pajamas when he meets Uncle Eddie. The billionaire boy had never been to such a place, and Kat watched, amused, as he marveled at everything the store had available to sell at 3am. He ended up buying a pair of too short jeans and a Yankees shirt with a credit card he, for whatever reason, carried in his pajama pocket.

They make it back to Brooklyn by dawn, and surprise Uncle Eddie by preparing a simple breakfast of toast and oatmeal. He demands that Kat explain herself, and they argue in Russian, much to Hale's bewilderment. After five minutes of arguing, Uncle Eddie sighs, picks up his phone, and hands it to Kat. He demands that Kat call her father (who was working a long con as a chemistry professor at Oxford) and explain to him what she had done. Uncle Eddie sat at the table and glared, dead eyed, at Hale, who seemed only moderately uncomfortable. Kat tells her father what she had planned to do at the Hale's manor, and then explains to him what had actually happened. Bobby groans, and silently resolves to return to Brooklyn as soon as possible—Kat was too much like her mother.

Uncle Eddie was thinking the same thing.

* * *

The three occupants of the brownstone ate breakfast quickly and quietly. Uncle Eddie left once he had finished his toast, and as he had finished off his third bowl of oatmeal, the boy, who insisted on being called Hale, asked if he could borrow the phone to tell his valet where he went.

"Didn't you ask to run away with me?" Kat asked, incredulous.

"Yes, but Marcus will wonder where I am, unlike my parents. He can even come here, if I ask him too—my parents have a penthouse on Park Avenue that I can stay at. I get the feeling that I won't be welcome here." He says with an unflappable grin.

Kat washes the dishes and escorts the boy out of the house. They spend the day walking around Brooklyn, occasionally stopping to eat and sit on park benches. Kat taught him to pick a pocket on the street—the right way, not the way that Hale thought it should be done.

He learned quickly, very quickly, so for much of the afternoon, they just talked. Kat explained the family, who was who, who had done what. She awkwardly explained what had happened to her mother, and what her father was doing. She explained all of the jobs she'd helped with, all of the places she'd traveled to, and museums she'd visited.

This led Hale to explain his own past, though he avoided the topic of his own family. Instead, he talked about the nannies he'd had, his valet, the schools he'd been expelled from (just months ago, he'd been expelled from a school in Massachusetts called Colgan for setting the planetarium on fire, and he was supposed to pick a new school to attend by the end of the month). He described the tortuous piano and singing and language lessons he'd been forced to take, but he actually liked the violin—it was therapeutic—and he didn't mind playing lacrosse. He also listed the half dozen properties and jewels and vehicles his family owned, stashed away all over the world.

It was nice, Kat thought. Hale was kind and funny, and despite the bitterness towards his own family, he was fascinated to learn all about hers.

By late afternoon, they were ready to return to Uncle Eddie's for dinner, but a black limo parked directly in front of them, and an old, greyed man exited. Hale introduced him as Marcus.

Kat immediately felt a pang of remorse. Earlier that morning, the boy, Hale, has said that no one would miss him. Kat believed him, but this man—Marcus—clearly cared for Hale. But the smile on the old man's face as Hale explained what happened reassured her. Marcus saw that Hale was happy, and that was the only thing that seemed to matter.

Marcus offered to drive Kat back to the brownstone, and she agreed, if only so she could have more time to talk to Hale. He'd be staying in his family' penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, so they could meet up tomorrow, unless she had somewhere else she has to be. She asked if Hale wanted to meet at the Central Park Zoo the next day, and he agreed.

It was just Uncle Eddie and Kat at dinner that night, and it was tense. It wasn't until their plates were clear of goulash that Uncle Eddie looked Kat in the eye, and insisted that he would do the dishes—she should go read, or practice her German or her lockpicking.

* * *

The next day, Kat met Hale at the zoo. She was wearing her usual summer wear of black shorts and a black tank top she'd worn more than once to climb through duct work, with her favorite pair of sunglasses. Hale, the boy who she had only seen wearing pajamas and a Yankees shirt, was now wearing linen pants, a crisply pressed button up shirt, and fancy leather shoes, and he didn't look at all uncomfortable. For a moment, as she saw him standing in a bustling crowd of families with young children, she felt strangely self conscious. Was she supposed to dress nicer to be seen with a billionaire? But, well, he technically wasn't a billionaire, his grandmother, the owner of Hale Industries, was a billionaire. He was just W.W. Hale the Fifth, the heir to the billionaire. And what was his name even supposed to be?

Hale spotted her before her internal fretting could come to a conclusion. He approached her with a wide, boyish smile on his face, and Kat decided that she would simply learn how to be W.W. Hale the Fifth's friend as she went. She was Bobby Bishop's daughter—she might prefer the role of grease man, but she certainly knew how to be an inside man. If she could pretend to be someone's friend, then she could actually make a friend.

She spent that day teaching Hale how to pick pockets in a crowd, a very different task then picking them off of the street. She taught him how to choose a mark (and especially, who not to pick), how to make sure you're not within sight of a guard, and how to make sure there are no concerned citizens who might see you and raise the alarm. Kat teaches by example, and lets Hale pick his first pocket only after he's proved he'd learned the rules.

The leave the zoo at mid afternoon, and Kat buys the boy gelato with the only money they'd kept, taken from the wallet of a man they'd overheard calling his wife by a number of horrible names. They both appreciate the chance to sit and take a break, and the gelato was perfect for a warm June day. Once they'd finished, Hale was eager to learn more, but Kat thought that he needed to learn the same way that she did—by baby steps. So they walked back to Hale's penthouse together, where Hale showed her the jewels and paintings that his family owned that they never had to steal.

Hale invited Kat to stay for dinner, which Marcus prepared. Kat used dinner to start teaching Hale the thief's vernacular. By the end of the meal, he knew the difference between an inside man and a grease man and a wheel man, and knew the plans for three basic cons—The Bird in the Hand, the Jack and Jill, and the Cinderella.

* * *

A week later, Bobby returned from Oxford with a suitcase full of rare earth minerals. It was the middle of the night when he got back to Uncle Eddie's brownstone, and he immediately woke up his daughter and demanded that she go with him to the Hale's penthouse. The father and daughter broke in, and found Marcus awake in the kitchen. Kat fumblingly introduced her father to the valet, and asked if they could talk to Hale. Marcus excused himself, and two minutes later, a bleary eyed Hale wandered out into the kitchen, this time wearing plaid pajama pants. If he was surprised to see a handsome man in a tweed suit with a shining smile sitting next to his new friend, he didn't show it.

Bobby immediately began to drill Hale with questions about the models of security cameras and safes available on the market. Hale, despite looking like he'd just been interrupted in the middle of a R.E.M. cycle, answered all of Bobby's questions easily. After ten or so questions, Bobby began to ask about the basic heist and cons Kat had taught him on that second day. Again, Hale passed with flying colors, and then Bobby demanded,

"Smile."

"What?"

"Gimme your best smile, kid."

Freezing for only a second, Hale produced a wide grin, that showed off his perfect teeth. It was very charming, Kat thought.

"No, no, not that smile. Too celebrity. Gimme the smile you use when talking to a pretty girl." Bobby demanded, shaking his head.

Hale frozen again, and returned with an even more charming smile, the one that looked almost sheepish, the one that Kat had seen a lot of over the past week.

"Not bad." Bobby said, standing and brushing the wrinkles from his suit pants. Turning to Kat, he clapped a hand on his daughter's shoulder and said "Not bad, kiddo." And then he strolled out of the front door, leaving Kat and Hale staring blankly behind him.

"That was your dad?" Hale asked after a beat.

Kat nodded.

He hummed.

"You take after your mom, then."

She nodded again.

He hummed again.

"Should I get used to conducting business in the middle of the night?"

"No, this was weird. He just's just, well, testing you. And me." She finished, belatedly.

"Oh." There was a pause as they both stared in completely different directions. "So, you can sleep in one of the guest rooms, if you'd like."

"Thanks," Kat said, standing up from the kitchen chair. The penthouse felt uncomfortable—inhospitable—in the day, and it wasn't any better at night. Kat had spent a lot of time in expensive places, but the Hale's penthouse was something different. She was relieved to find that the bedroom that Hale showed her to—the one next to his, he explained—was a little more comfortable than the rest of the apartment.

* * *

Bobby joined Kat in training Hale over the next few weeks. He showed Hale how to be an inside man— how to charm and distract get what you needed from the target. Bobby even took Hale on a job at a mansion in the Hamptons, posing as the long lost college friend of the owner and his son in order to get the key to the man's safety deposit box. It goes seamlessly, and the two return to Uncle Eddie's later that night grinning and laughing.

In August, Hale meets Uncle Henry and Simon, who helps Hale set up a fake school, creating a bank account for Hale's parents to send a tuition check to that would automatically donate the money to a scholarship fund.

In September, he meets Gabrielle when she comes to stay in Brooklyn, her new stepfather believing she was off at boarding school. Gabrielle flirts incessantly at him, and he flirts a little in return, which Kat didn't know quite how she felt about that. They're both tall and unreasonably good looking, after all, shouldn't that mean something?

By halfway through October, Hale became a member of his first big heist crew. It's in Istanbul, and like before, he serves as Bobby's protégé, but this time, he gets to sit at the table and plan. The planning goes well enough until they start to argue about how they were going to transport 400 pounds of gold ingots out of the country, until Hale, looking bewildered, says "Well, we could take my jet."

And each head at the table turned and looked at him, everyone but Kat gaping, open mouthed.

"You actually have a jet?" Bobby asked after a moment.

"Well, it's Hale Industries', but there's four or five, so I can usually use one."

Bobby nodded slightly, and then turned to his daughter beside him, and in a low voice asked, "A jet? Really?" And Kat just smirked. They'd used the jet last month, to help Uncle Ezra on a job in Belize.

It was pretty cool, Kat had to admit it.

"Can we really use it?" Bobby asked again.

"Sure. We'll probably have to refuel in Hawaii, and maybe in California. I'm not a pilot, I don't know." He shrugs, and after three strained seconds, the planning continued.

* * *

And as Hale became part of the family and Bobby's right hand man, he also became Kat's best friend.

Kat had never really had a best friend before. Sure, there was a time in their lives when she and Gabrielle got along, and she'd always gotten along with Simon and the Bagshaws boys, but they always had such different interests, and every few years Kat would see the youngest DiMarco boy again, but she could have done without that. Really, before Hale, her dad had been her best friend, and he was, well,i her dad/i. They didn't do friend things together, like eat the kind of junk food that Uncle Eddie never allowed in his house while watching cartoons, or mercilessly tease each other, like Kat did with Hale. Hale started to call her Kitty Kat, something he picked up from Gabrielle. For whatever reason, it annoyed Kat much less when the nickname came from Hale then when it came from Gabrielle.

Despite Kat's repeated demands and guesses and bribes, Hale refused to reveal what the W.W. of his name stood for. One time, Kat snuck off to the library to see what the internet and what public records said about the multi-billion dollar Hale family. However, the search was fruitless—both Hale Industries's web page and the Wikipedia pages for W.W. Hale the First through Fourth simply listed their name as being W.W., which wasn't at all helpful. Census records and tax records were protected, and Kat wasn't good enough with computers to figure out how to get past the protections on a public computer, but decided to ask Simon about it later.

When she saw Hale the next day, at the penthouse on Park Avenue, he somehow knew what she had been up to. He accused her of cheating, and insisted that she could not use the internet to figure out his name, or ask Simon to do it for her. Kat begrudgingly relented.

By this point, she'd already guessed William and Walter and Wyndham and Wilson. She guessed Winslow one night, as they helped Uncle Eddie and Uncle Marco case a hotel restaurant in Toronto, and he laughed so hard that they were nearly thrown out.

She guessed Watson, next, on the train between Glasgow and Edinburgh, as they traveled to meet the Bagshaws to help with a plan to abduct a royal corgi. He spent the next two hours speaking in a horrible English accent and smoking an invisible pipe, and wouldn't stop until Kat bribed him with gelato, which they ate on a bench in the shadow of the castle.

* * *

They returned to Brooklyn from London with a single corgi puppy the week before Christmas. As Kat and Hale sat on the floor of the brownstone's kitchen, playing with the rambunctious little dog, Bobby entered the kitchen with a delivery pizza in hand.

Uncle Eddie, he explained, had decided he was too old for a white Christmas, and would be spending the holidays in San Juan (and left his usual reminder that no one was allowed to touch his stove while he was gone). Gabrielle and Irina would be in Morocco, and Kat's other assorted uncles would be spending the holidays with their immediate families, wherever they should be. And as Hale would be spending Christmas upstate with his parents, Bobby and Kat could go anywhere they liked for the holiday. Kat, trying to hide how disappointed she was as they ate the pizza (and ignored the cries of the puppy, who was simply upset that no one was playing with him), decided there was no better place to spend the holiday than Stockholm, if only because that was the city she thought of.

After dinner, Bobby took the puppy to Uncle Henry, and so Kat and Hale were left alone in the brownstone. At Hale's insistence, Kat showed him the various mementos she'd kept from jobs, and the gifts she'd received that meant the most to her. She showed him the sapphire from the first job she'd pulled with Uncle Eddie—she was surprised to find that the ring fit now, although part of her was afraid she would lose it if she ever took it out of the bedroom—and the stuffed polar bear that Uncle Sal had given to her when she was born. She even retrieved the Faberge Egg that she kept in a safe below her—her mom's—bed.

"Is that real?" Hale asked, holding the golden egg up to the light.

"It is. It's one of the Eggs of the Magi—Frankincense. Most Faberge Eggs were made in honor of Easter, but some were made for Christmas. This is one of three eggs made as a set. They're all identical on the outside, made of twenty four karat gold, rubies from Burma—or Myanmar—and chrome diopside from Siberia. But on the inside—"

Kat reached over, to open the little golden latch at the hemisphere of the egg. Inside, sitting in a velvet lined groove, was a little figurine of a man wearing a fine long robe and a tall hat, holding a square brown box in front of his chest.

"One of the Magi," Hale said, watching as Kat displayed the figure of the man under the light. "Casper?"

"Someone's been studying their art history." Kat said with a slight smile. "Yeah, the man bringing frankincense is usually named Casper, the one bringing gold is named Melchior, and the one with myrrh is named Balthazar. Different artists from different times and places depicted the Magi as being different ages and from different places and cultures. In the Eggs of the Magi, all three are depicted as Persian—the hat and the pants show that—but they're all of different ages. Balthazar is a young man, Melchior is middle aged, and Casper is old."

Hale listened, rapt, as Kat explained, and slowly, a strange smile, one Kat had never seen before, stretched across his face.

"Where are the other two?" He asked, as Kat slipped the figurine back inside the egg.

"They're both privately owned. I've asked my family to let me know if they ever find out where the other two are. I—this one was my mother's. I've always liked the idea of the three of them being reunited."

Hale hummed, and watched as the gems glittered in the light.

"How did your mother get it?"

"I don't really know." Kat murmured. "I just know she stole it not long after she met my dad. I don't know where, or who she took it from."

Hale watched as Kat put the egg into the safe again, deep in thought.

Kat and Hale exchanged gifts two days later, before Hale traveled upstate and before Kat left for Sweden. Kat gave Hale his first set of lockpicks, and Hale gave Kat no less than ten pairs of sunglasses.

* * *

With the start of the new year, Kat, Hale, and Bobby went to Venice, to do a job that used a mini submarine, of all things. Then it was Israel, and then back to Paris for the Embassy job—Kat spent her fourteenth birthday with Hale, following a diplomat's wife and children through the Bois de Boulogne.

Then it was Dubai, Dhaka, and Delhi (the alliteration was intentional), and then a long con in Taipei, where Hale made both Kat and Bobby very proud by saving the day with a Hail Mary (they were less proud when he began making puns about it, only hours later). After that, it was Lagos, Copenhagen, and then a small town in central Pennsylvania. It was back to the regular chaos—Kat's break was over, and Hale had proved he was fluent in the language of the inside man and proficient at grease man and pocket man (but the family quickly learned he was a horrible wheeler, and shouldn't be trusted to drive anything outside of a video game). Hale's absorbed into the family just as Bobby had once been. He's the perfect addition to the team—he and Bobby are the perfect duo to have on the inside, and while he usually attracts attention from strangers with his tall frame, tailored suits, and warm smiles (which can be a good thing), when he's with Kat, he's turns into a normal teenage boy. And when he pulls a job with Gabrielle, the two of them can pass for the most unfairly attractive siblings, both being tall and golden skinned with the grace of a runway model—they're perhaps the best pair to have ever run the Jack and Jill.

Before anyone can notice, another year has passed. Bobby and Kat spent Christmas in Hawaii with Uncle Eddie, Gabrielle and Aunt Irina. In theory, it's nice, but they're there for the sake of a job, so rather than a feast and presents, they're occupied with breaking into another man's suite. Hale, meanwhile, spent the holiday in England with his grandmother and parents and assorted members of his extended family. He complains about them all without ever really explaining why they're all so deplorable. /p

* * *

Bobby and Kat take a quick trip together, just before New Year's Eve, to deliver the jewelry they stole in Hawaii to the buyer in London, and then they rendezvous with Hale in Japan.

Bobby decides it's time to pull a job he's wanted to do for a while—the Tokyo Exchange. The people he needs are available, and he has his daughter and protégé by his side. They come up with a plan that would need a lot of people and a full month for the job, but the reward is huge, and the plan smart enough that it would take weeks for anyone at the TSE to notice what had happened, so recruiting people isn't hard.

Nearly everyone in the inner circle of their family comes, but so do plenty of people only loosely tied to the family, most of whom that Kat hasn't seen since her mother's funeral. For a while, they're all distracted by Hale—"Yes, one of _those_ Hales"—but then the attention turns to Kat.

For perhaps the first time in a very long time, Kat wishes she had Gabrielle with her, if only to divert some of the attention. She couldn't handle the constant questions and comparisons to her mother. Every single person approached her, at some quiet point or another, and asked her if it was true— _did she help her father in the job at the Paris embassy? Did she really help him with the submarine job in Venice? Did she know that Nadia would be so proud of her? What about her grandfather, Alexei? He'd been quite the inside man in his prime, it's such a shame you never met him._

But then Kat wondered if Gabrielle would get the same comparisons, because she didn't have a dead mother.

The ordeal made Kat think about things that she had not thought about for years.

Her mother's body had never been brought home from Russia—one time, when Kat was nine, her overheard her father talking to some of her uncles about how they had lost Nadia's trail and had never been able to find her. Russia was a big place, and while their family had plenty of friends there, they had more enemies.

Kat never breathed a word of it to anyone else, but she spent the next three weeks after that crying herself to sleep, because she desperately wanted to believe her mother was alive. She had to be. But if she was alive, why hadn't her mom found her? Why hadn't she made it back?

After weeks of daydreaming about seeing her mother alive again, a voice within Kat's own mind told her— _you know it's not true_. She broke her own heart, at the age of nine, by reminding herself that her mother was well and truly dead. And now, in Tokyo, surrounded by people telling her how much she looks like Nadia, and how they wish that Nadia could see how successful her daughter was, Kat realized that this—being a thief—had killed her mother.

Her father, her Uncle Eddie, her Uncles Vinnie and Felix and Calvin and Marco and Sal and the rest, even Aunt Irina, did not seem to realize that they were doing the thing that killed Nadia. Kat knew for certain that each of her family members had lost someone else, someone other than Nadia, in the business. Maybe Kat's only affected like this because it was her mother that she lost, and when she was only six years old? Because it seemed untenable to her, that she was the only one concerned about the danger.

By three weeks into the Tokyo job, thoughts about how thievery killed her mother were popping into Kat's mind nearly everyday. But she's an excellent liar, and no one but Hale really notices that there's something off with her.

Four days before the heist, Uncle Eddie made a few critical remarks about Kat's abilities as a grease man. She'd had an off day, and had been spotted by one of the Stock Exchange security guards after a stranger bumped into her and spilled her tea all over her sweater. Now the guard would remember her face, so they'd either have to make Hale the grease man in her place, or take the time to find colored contacts and a wig and make a prosthetic nose, and _Katarina_ , we do not have the time to manage either of those.

It's not the first time Uncle Eddie had been critical of her, and they were able to get Kat's disguise later that same day, but something about his comments hit Kat hard. It hurt. Her mother had been killed being a thief, and Nadia was clearly better than Kat was, so what did that mean for her?

Later that night, Kat was lying face down on her bed, crying into her pillow. It wasn't something she was proud of, but she was sharing a hotel suite with her father, who might have still been meeting with Uncle Sal, and Hale, who was in the room next to hers.

She thought she was truly being quiet, and maybe she was, but Hale knocked on the door, and even though Kat never answered, he let himself in. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and laid a hand on one of her shoulders. Kat took a few deep breaths, sat up, and turned to face her best friend, who looked heartbroken for her. With a feeble smile, Kat wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and his wrapped around her waist.

Hale wasn't one of those people who felt warm to the touch—he wasn't clammy skinned or anything, but he wasn't particularly warm. But he did smell good—his cologne seemed to cling to everything, and his shoulders were broad and strong, and so were his hands.

After Kat stopped crying, Hale stayed for a little bit—he didn't seem like he wanted to let go. But he did, as soon as they heard Bobby walk through the door into the suite—but still Hale returned a minute later, with a glass of water, and quietly explained that he'd told Bobby that Kat was already asleep. Kat says goodnight and drinks her water, and then tries to fall asleep. She's awake for some time—nearly two hours—because she's realized that maybe, Hale is also part of her problem.

He's not part of the family, at least, not in the sense that he was born into it. He didn't really belong here, in Tokyo, with a gang of 20 thieves about to pull a job on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, when his family owns companies that sold their stocks on the TSE. Hale was the obvious choice to inherit the company, some day, after his grandmother and father, and he couldn't stay in limbo between Kat's world and his. He would have to forsake Hale Industries, or forsake Kat's family. But for now—

For now, Hale was secretive. He did not discuss his family or any friends he might have had before leaving them for Kat, but he had, bit by bit, revealed some information about what his life was like. Sure, he had nannies and absentee parents who did not seem to love each other or love their son —or if they did, they had a strange way of showing it. He also had three separate credit cards (one of which was in Kat's possession most of the time) that were paid off with the computer command of a family accountant who did not ask questions and did not tell Hale's parents that he was making purchases across six continents while he was supposed to be in a British boarding school. And of course, he had a jet, so he wasn't a normal person by many people's standards, but—

He had a bedroom of his own (multiples, really) that he kept his clothes and old toys he couldn't bring himself to get rid of, that he decorated with posters for movies and sports teams. He had lessons on how to play the violin, not on how to crack a safe, and he went to a school where he had to memorize the declensions of Latin nouns, not the lense angles and sweeping patterns of commercially available security cameras.

Hale had shown her what the other side was like, and had shown her that you could walk between worlds.

That night is the first night that she considered leaving the family business.

She brushes the idea aside, until two weeks later, when she learns that Uncle Vinnie has been arrested in London for a job he pulled four years earlier.

She decides what she's going to on her fifteenth birthday, which she spends with her dad and Hale and the Bagshaws in Panama City.

She's still pulling heists with her family, but she's pulling one of her own. And she's keeping this one a secret.

By the time an untrained capuchin monkey nearly ruins a job in Barcelona, Kat has arranged for the destruction of the student records at the Trinity School in England and the Bern Institute in Switzerland.

Before anyone even suggests that they pull a job in the Vatican, Kat has arranged for Laura Hawthorne, sophomore, to be offered a TV acting contract (for a show that will never get made), encouraging her to drop out of the Colgan School.

Only hours before Miss Hawthorn drops out of Colgan, a very generous check from Mr. Robert Bishop, Esq. arrives at the school, with more than enough money to cover tuition, room, and board for his daughter, Katarina, who if you'll notice, is at the top of your waiting list.

For over five months, Kat keeps it a secret. Her father doesn't notice, but Uncle Eddie has noticed that Kat can't stay in the kitchen for longer than it takes her to eat. Hale certainly notices, and he does his best to distract her from whatever it is that's wrong. He thinks it's because of Kat's mother—he'd heard some of the comments that people made to her in Tokyo, and no matter how well intentioned, he could understand how it hurt her. So he drags her to musicals and plays in New York, to go get ice cream or gelato in the middle of the night, no matter where they are. He gets her to play video games that he usually only plays with Simon or the Bagshaws, and once, he takes her to ballroom dancing lessons to learn to foxtrot.

But Hale can tell there's something wrong, and Kat doesn't want to tell him what it is, so he doesn't push her.

She doesn't tell anyone until three days before the fall semester at Colgan begins. She tells the family—her father and Uncle Eddie and Hale—after dinner, which is spent discussing where the next job should be. Kat doesn't say anything until everyone—except her—has cleared their plate. When she tells them, Bobby and Hale stare at her in total bewilderment, while Uncle Eddie shakes his head in shame.

 _Colgan will kill your soul_ , he tells her. Kat just huffs and walks away.

Hale tells her the same thing later that evening— _you'll never be happy there_. Kat tells him that just because he wasn't happy there it doesn't mean Kat won't be. And then she huffs and walks away, and finds him hours later to apologize.

Bobby doesn't say anything other than "If that's what you want."

Uncle Vinnie returns from London the next day—for whatever reason, the man in the photographs and security camera recordings, which served as the bulk of the prosecution's evidence, no longer looked like him. He wasn't the first person in the family to have spent time in prison, and he wouldn't be the last. Uncle Vinnie pulls her aside after dinner, and tells her that a school like Colgan is the same thing as prison. _It's school now or prison later, she thinks._

Bobby is gone for nearly two days, and Kat doesn't see him again until he's helping her move her recently purchased bedding and suitcases into her dorm room. He says, "if you're certain, kiddo." And with a hug and a kiss, he leaves.

Kat unpacks as soon as her dad is gone, and enjoys decorating her own bedroom for the first time in her life. Then she goes through the hall, introducing herself to her neighbors—all of whom are perfectly lovely—and then attends a new student orientation meeting. She confirms which classes she's going to take, meets two of her teachers, and learns about all of the clubs and extracurricular activities Colgan has to offer. She decides to join the French, German, and Russian clubs, to keep her language skills sharp, and considers auditioning for the school's production of _A Midsummer's Night Dream_ in the spring, because why shouldn't she?

And then she goes back to her dorm room, which she has to herself, and nearly cries from the loneliness and the sudden surge of homesickness for a home that she never really had. She calls Hale that night, and conversation is stilted. She calls him again three days later, after her first day of classes, and it isn't any easier to talk to him. She calls her dad that night, and it's even harder to talk to him then it is to Hale. It's like they have no common ground.

Kat spends three months at Colgan. She has a little trouble adjusting to life in school, but she likes it. She likes learning about chemistry (beyond how to make controlled explosions) and she likes learning about math (for purposes beyond dividing up the profit of a job). She likes her literature classes, and she likes having a chance to talk about the books she's read. She even enjoys her European art history classes on some level, despite the fact that it all seems very quaint—perhaps it's because at least five paintings and two statues in the textbook were stolen by her parents alone.

And then one night, the Headmaster's 1958 Porsche is retrofitted into the fountain in the central quad, and Kat is expelled. Marcus and Hale pick her up from Colgan, and they drive for hours, from western Massachusetts to Wyndham Woods, just north of the Catskills.

* * *

Kat returns to the family, and realizes that maybe her family was right—but only to a degree. She, Kat Bishop, could have been happy at Colgan. She could have graduated and gone on to an Ivy League or Seven Sisters school with all of her classmates, and picked the type of career that normal people had—part of her liked the idea of being a lawyer. She could have remained friends with Hale, the boy who, for now, walks between two worlds, and who, someday, will have to decide. She might not have been part of the family but she would be happy.

But Colgan would have crushed the soul of _Katarina Alexei Mirela Bishop_ , daughter of Nadia and Robert Bishop, scion of one of the greatest thieving families to have ever tormented the earth. If she had stayed at Colgan, the girl part of Kat would have lived, but the thief would have died. She couldn't do what Hale does. If she stayed at Colgan, she would have never been able to stay in world to which she was born—small but strong, in the middle of a storm.

Despite the way Kat sometime feels about her family and her world, it's where Katarina belongs. She realizes, as she assembles her own little hesit society and pulls off a job they plan together—for the sake of her father—that Kat and Katarina can exist within the same person.

Both parts of her—Kat and Katarina—are welcomed back into the family with open arms. As the prodigal daughter, a metaphorical calf is slaughtered and Uncle Eddie, insisting he is now too old to travel for Christmas, invites the whole family to Brooklyn to celebrate. All is forgiven. Admittedly, it helps that Kat's just done what no one else has done by pulling off a job at the Henley, and the stories of her confrontations with Taccone and her plot to have Bobby arrested by Interpol become immediate legends.

Yes, she was used by Romani, but _Girl Praying to Saint Nicholas_ and _Angel Returning to Heaven_ were returned to their rightful homes. Whoever Romani is—and Kat has a few ideas, ranging from the possible to the unlikely to childish wishful thinking—she cannot stay mad at them.

Hale forgives her for running away, but he does not forget it. Maybe because he is also a runaway, who some day will have to decide if he wants to go running back to his father after he's had his fun with Kat. Even after the Henley job, he acts strange around her, and it doesn't stop even after they steal the Cleopatra emerald in February—in fact, it just gets worse, because Kat kisses him, and he clammed up and left for Paraguay, except he didn't. And then they were in Monte Carlo and they con Maggie, and Kat really wishes she had never met Nick Bennett, because it's too much, to have a third prodigal child in the mix, because maybe Hale would trust her more if he didn't see the parallels between Nick and Kat (the ones he ignores in himself, because he does not seem to realize that he and Kat are two sides of the same coin).

And then they visit Uruguay—or maybe it was Paraguay—to help the family with another job, just before Kat's sixteenth birthday—and then it's the three of them—Gabrielle, Hale, and Kat—re-stealing art all over the world. Part of it feels strange, because it used to be Kat, Hale, and Bobby doing jobs together, but now that they've two done big jobs all on their own, it seems right. Besides, Kat and Gabrielle have grown out of their childhood determination to not get along, and also, Kat and Hale have started kissing each other and occasionally referring to each other as their significant other, so it would strange to start doing jobs with Kat's father again.

And then, in May, Hazel Hale dies, and Hale is forced to make a decision that Kat thought would wait for at least thirty or fourth years. She meets Hale's parents, and Garrett, and Natalie, and Silas, and though she will never meet Hazel, she feels like she gets to know the woman very well. She feels like she knows Hale better than ever, except for whenever it feels like she doesn't know him at all.

But Kat and her family are able to save Hazel Hale's, and now her Hale's, company.

Not because she needs Hale's jet or money—she actually has plenty of her own stored in bank accounts all over the world, because she is, as she needs reminding of less and less frequently, a very good thief—but because Hale's happiness and wellbeing is the most important thing in the world to her.

Should he decide to return to the world into which he was born, Hale Industries will be waiting for him when he turns 25.

But Kat still frets over what that will mean for the two of them, because shortly before the giant mess with Hazel and Garrett and Hale Industries, Hale turned 17. There are less than 8 years for Hale to decide what he wants to do, and while Kat has only just turned 16 years old, and mathematically, that's another half of her life away, Kat knows that time is the greatest thief of all, and it might just steal Hale away from her.

Kat knows there are six, maybe seven, things that can happen to their relationship when Hale turns 25, not including the scenario where they irredeemably fall out before then, or one of them dies—actually, there's always a chance that something apocalyptic will occur and billion dollar companies will become irrelevant, so there are maybe 10 possible things that can happen with regards to her relationship with Hale. She knows that their time will come.

But for now...

She and Hale—her boyfriend and best friend—go to a tense dinner at the Hale's house in Martha's Vineyard, at his parents' invitation. Mr. and Mrs. W.W. Hale the Fourth—the latter of whom insists Kat call her Helena— believe that they have traveled from a Spanish language immersion camp in Puerto Rico to be with them. Actually, they had been in Cuba, posing as Uncle Ezra's son and his girlfriend for a job, but despite the fact that the senior Hales had just met the majority of Kat's family the month before, they remained entirely oblivious to their son and his girlfriend's occupation.

Dinner was served by a maid on the back deck of the mansion at sunset. As Helena explained, there would be four courses—"All of Scooter's favorites," she claimed, although, as they served cake without ice cream, Kat knew that wasn't true.

The dinner was incredibly awkward. Helena was overly solicitous, and did the majority of the speaking, while Hale Senior said perhaps four complete sentences. Kat tried her best to try to like Helena, but she couldn't. The senior Hales depended on their son for their livelihood again, and Kat had seen how they treated their son when they didn't.

She and Hale answered questions about Knightsbury—"The uniforms are better than Colgan's, and so is the art program," and "The lacrosse team isn't very good, I don't know why they haven't fired the coach yet,"—about Kat's family "Bobby and Kat have taught me everything I know about art," and "My mother's family is mostly Russian, but also Romanian," —and even questions about their relationship—"We met my first semester at Knightsbury" and "Oh, I suppose you could say we've been dating since February, or maybe March?"

His parents finish off the evening by giving Hale a belated birthday present—"oh, Scooter, with everything that happened, it slipped our mind, it's just been sitting in the garage." It's a car—a shiny, expensive, electric car—that they bought for Hale without knowing that he had actually never taken a test to get a legitimate drivers license.

But Hale thanks them, because it's the first time in years they've given him a birthday present in person. Then he informs his parents that it's time for him and Kat to leave because they have to leave early the next morning visit her dad in London. They say goodbye to Marcus, who had driven them there, and drive for nearly five hours through the night, back to Wyndham Woods. Kat insists on driving after they stopped halfway to charge the car, because Hale is too tense to drive (and he still wasn't very good at it.)

It reminds Kat very much of that first night, the night she met Hale 3 years and one week before. This car, however, is much cooler than Uncle Calvin's Vespa—it has a sunroof and also, the seats are more comfortable — and they're both dressed a lot nicer.

"I should actually learn how to drive." Hale says, when they still have an hour left til Wyndham. His face was smushed against the window, half illuminated by the light of the car's fancy built in GPS. Kat had thought he was asleep.

"Maybe." She says simply.

"I'm too dependent on my family wealth." He mumbles.

"We've been over this. I love you for more than just your limitless credit cards."

Hale sat up, and bleary eyed, turned towards Kat.

"Do you?"

"You have a number of virtues, your better than average singing voice not included."

"No, you said you loved me."

Kat's hands tensed around the steering wheel, and she bit her tongue as she realized that yes, she had said that. _Well, it's true_ , a part of her thought, _but, really, was this the best—_

Another part of her reminded herself about the lessons she had just learned, in her pursuit to help Hale after Hazel's death.

"I do." She said, sparing only the briefest of glances towards Hale, unwilling to take her eyes off of the interstate, and still a little scared to see Hale's reaction.

She can feel him watching her for four full seconds, before he replies in a quiet, heavy voice that Kat had only heard from him the once.

"I love you too."

Kat spared him another smile, and really, really hoped that the light inside the car was dim enough that Hale could not possibly see the way her left hand shook on the steering wheel, because the way her adrenaline was rushing was shameful.

And then one of Hale's hands came to rest just above her knee, and that really wasn't the best, because it was her driving leg and _she kind of needed it to drive_.

But—this was good enough for now, right?

She and Hale were alone—something that didn't happen often—and they understood each other—and they loved each other, and could admit it. Sure, they were traveling to rural Finland in only a few hours to try and find a portrait by Le Brun, and it was a bit of a long shot, and soon, she and Hale would have to make a lot of difficult decisions, the kind that concern their own and their shared happiness, but hopefully, they have learned from their missteps and will be better at making those kinds of decisions.

Because the way Kat felt, then, in the silent car, next to Hale, after an awkward dinner, and with more than fifty minutes left until they could collapse into bed and get some sleep, she felt pretty great.


	2. Chapter Two

**AN: Thank you so much to those of you who reviewed the first chapter! Here is the second and final part. I hope you enjoy it, and no matter when you read it-happy holidays!**

* * *

Hale, with the help of Marcus, had given Kat the best possible Christmas present. She had been completely and entirely resolved to the idea that she would - probably - never see her mother's Frankincense Egg again. And she was okay with that, because it would help Hale's legacy and charity and peace of mind. But then Marcus-and Marianne-proved themselves to be the kindest, most wonderful and honest people Kat knew

And then Uncle Charlie arrived in Brooklyn with the Gold Egg, and not for the first time, Kat was actually very thankful for that little genetic trait that everyone in her family seemed to have, the one turned them into magpies at the sight of anything valuable and shiny. Something about knowing that the real Gold Egg was intact and in the care of her uncle reassured her. Her father's not-quite-a-joke about stealing the third egg soured the mood just a little, but as the five of them settled down to eat the dinner that Uncle Eddie and Uncle Charlie made, with the two Eggs of the Magi decorating the table, Kat couldn't have been happier. Hale was happy, her father was happy, her uncles were happy, her friends, across the world, were happy, so Kat supposed she was happy too.

After dinner was done, Kat, smiling, said her goodnights and her _Merry Christmases_ to her family. She said a special goodnight to Hale, out of sight of her dad and uncles, and went about getting ready for bed.

She had already settled into bed and pulled up the quilt on the frilly pink bed when there was a quiet knock at the door.

"Kiddo?" It was her dad, holding a short, thin, and long box, wrapped in silver paper, with a red velvet bow on top. "What, are you already to fall asleep? You didn't think I forgot our tradition, did you?"

"No," She said, smiling. "I'm just used to your sense of over-dramatic timing."

"My timing is just dramatic enough." Bobby said, scrunching up his face into some vague expression of criticism. But then he smiled, that smile that was reserved only for her, and took a seat on the bed, right by Kat's legs. He held the present halfway between them, letting Kat get a better look at the box. "It's your one Christmas Eve present, and per tradition, I didn't steal this one." He shifted the box around, letting Kat see every side of the box, like a TV shopping channel sales person. "Although, in the holiday spirit of honesty, I didn't exactly buy it, either." He turned the box again, and, grinning, Kat held one hand, out expectantly.

"Is it something you made?" Kat asked, trying and failing to keep a straight face. Bobby chuckled in reply.

"No, no, I didn't make it, although I've been meaning to start crocheting, now that you mention it. But," He paused, turning the box again. "Continuing in the spirit of honesty, I did try to steal this, once."

Kat's smile shifted. It was fairly obvious from the shape of the box what kind of thing she would find inside, but now there was really only one thing it could be.

"Is it Mom's watch?" She asked, her smile warm. Bobby nodded, and set the box in her outstretched hand. Carefully, she pulled off the bow, and ripped the paper along the edge. Inside was a black box, and inside that was an antique watch.

"You and Hale never asked me what I was doing in Sydney. There's a collector there, I found him online. He had the right pieces, and a jeweler friend was able to fix it."

Taking a deep breath, she picked up the watch. It had been mother's and her great-grandmother's before that. Made in the 1930s, its style was vaguely Art Deco. It was white gold, with a skinny, rectangular face, made from shining silver mother of pearl. Around the face were a number of rectangular cut diamonds.

"It's been cleaned, all of the diamonds have been secured, and the clasp was repaired, but you should still be very careful when you wear it. It might attract a common street thief, and you've met and surpassed your quota for strange boys you can bring home."

"Thanks, daddy." Kat said, as she pulled the watch out of the box. Even though her father had just told her that it had all been fixed, she was still a little frightened by the idea of actually wearing the heirloom watch.

"Wear it proudly, kiddo." Bobby leaned over to kiss his daughter on the forehead. They shared a brief hug, and with another _Merry Christmas,_ Bobby left, shutting the door behind him without a single sound.

Kat examined the watch in closer detail. There was a nick in the metal casing next to the 4, like she remembered, but the diamonds and gold were all much shinier than the last time she'd seen it, before it has been left in a London lock box owned by one of her father's aliases.

There was another knock on the door, and at Kat's bidding, Hale entered.

"Hey."

"Hey."

Hale sat on the bed, just where Bobby had been sitting, and Kat threw the quilt aside to move closer to his side. He, unlike her, was still dressed in his cheesy Christmas sweater and trousers, and from his pocket, he pulled out a little square box—roughly the size of a box that earrings or, even a _ring_ , came in, wrapped in green paper.

"This," He said, holding out the box, and avoiding her gaze, "is present number one of sixteen."

"Sixteen?" Kat asked, totally incredulous. "Sixteen presents? And wouldn't—"

"The egg doesn't count." He murmured, brushing a lock of Kat's hair back, despite the fact it was in no way covering her face. "I could, if you like, prepare and perform a speech about why the Frankincense Egg was a present for me. I didn't even know Marcus was going to buy it, but it was a very selfish gift, for me, a very selfish person." A smirk slid across his face, and Kat's own smile warmed.

"Hale—"

"And that's why this—" He held out the little box, which, based on the lumpy corners, Kat assumed he wrapped himself. "Is present number one. It's my favorite present—" He cut himself off, and made a disgusted face. "Actually, it's my least favorite present, but," He drew the box back, "It's a secret. Which is why I'm risking death and dismemberment for the chance to give this—" He finally put the box in Kat's outstretched hand, "to you, while we're alone in the privacy of your bedroom, in your Uncle's house, while you're in your pajamas. So." He halted, as Kat slowly tore the paper away. "I hope you appreciate this."

Kat was right—it was the type of box that jewelry came in, black and velvet. She opened the little box and found, not earrings, and certainly not a _ring_ , but a tiny origami swan, made out of plain white paper.

She glanced up at Hale, who seemed, surprisingly, insecure. Giving him another warm smile, Kat began to unfold the paper, which she could tell was not entirely blank, but there was no possible way she could see what was on it. Slowly, she unfolded the swan, careful not to rip a single part of it. Her hands were almost— _almost_ —shaking by the time she had completely unfolded it. But not even W.W. Hale the Fifth could—

Oh.

Oh...

It was a photocopy of a birth certificate, for a boy born in April, 17 years ago. He was born in London, to two American parents. His name was—

"Oh." Kat said, staring at the photocopy. She understood the words on the page, objectively, but they seemed totally unbelievable.

"Yes." Hale said, nodding slightly.

After a beat, Kat tossed the paper aside, threw her arms around Hale's shoulders, and kissed her boyfriend, once, before she pulled away. Through her sudden giggles, she told him "I think I'll stick to calling you Hale."

Hale laughed, once, and hugged Kat in return.

"That's what I hoped you would say."

"Why would W.W. Hale the First's parents name him that?" Asked Kat, totally red in the face.

"Why did W.W. Hale the First hate his firstborn son enough to continue the name?" Hale scoffed in reply.

"It's—it's even worse than Scooter!"

The two dissolved in rather pathetic giggles, each supporting the other and keeping the the from falling onto the floor.

It took, by Kat's internal clock, two and a half minutes for them to calm down. By then, faces were flushed and streaked with tears, and Kat was fighting away hiccups.

"Thank you for finally telling me your name." Kat said, squeezing Hale by the hand, before wiping away the tears from her eyes.

"Yeah, well, your guesses haven't been getting any better, so you're welcome."

He smiled again, and Kat, who was proud to say that she had been the cause for a number of Hale's smiles, couldn't help but feel that warm, cliched butterflies feeling as she saw how happy he truly was.

She kissed him again, softer and sweeter, and then Hale whispered, "I love you."

Unable to fight down the bubbling feeling of mischief, Kat whispered, "I love you too—" and called Hale by his first name for the first time.

Hale's warm smile and gleaming eyes instantly froze over, and Kat started to giggle again.

Pulling away, Hale sighed.

"Merry Christmas," He said. "You still have fifteen more presents to open tomorrow. Thankfully, none of them will provide you with the chance to betray my love and trust in you again." And with another kiss to her cheek, he stood, and headed for the door.

Hale's outstretched hand was nearly to the doorknob when he turned, and leaned against the door frame. With a straight face, he asked, "Listen, I know it's already late, but would you mind being awake by 6:30?"

"What? Why?" Kat demanded, her giggles abruptly ending. Christmas mornings were a hallowed time, one to be properly observed by sleeping in.

"That's when the two dozen goats get here." He answered with that horribly self-confident grin that made Kat a little angry sometimes.

Kat, she was ashamed to admit it, was completely and totally shocked. Her chest tightened, and she couldn't tell if it was because she was about to laugh or because she was about to scream.

"You're joking. Look me in the eye, Hale, and tell me you're joking." She demanded, half standing from the bed.

"I guess you'll just have to find out in, oh, 6 hours." And Hale slipped out of the door with a final smile, and Kat really couldn't believe it.

She really couldn't believe it.

But still, by 6:29 the next morning, she was silently stepping down the stairs of the brownstone, wearing a shining white gold and diamond bracelet on her wrist, hidden beneath the sleeve of her flannel pajamas.


End file.
